


yuzu

by ImberNox



Category: Messiah Project - All Media Types
Genre: Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Teru Hi no Mori, i promise that i only write happy endings for these two
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24384385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImberNox/pseuds/ImberNox
Summary: Yugi notices distinctly that Miike never tries to hide his petals - never tries to quiet the shuddering coughs that push them from his lips and to his hands - and cannot look away.
Relationships: Miike Mayo/Yugi Kotarou
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	1. september brings falling leaves and petals

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a long time since I've posted a work for Messiah. I'm still thinking about it daily, watching it as much as I can. I have a few projects still in-progress that I hope to continue working on until completion. I recently read an excellent Hanahaki Disease fic for a different fandom, though, and it reinvigorated my interest in the concept. It took less than a day of me sitting around yearning to realize that Miike and Yugi's set-up is almost beat-for-beat Hanahaki, just without any flowers. They already have strong emotions of unrequited love that are realized to be requited in Tsukuyomi. There's misunderstandings and arguments and Miike already vanishing from his illness. I promise I only write happy endings for Miike and Yugi! That being said, this fic makes me feel heavy.

The first petal comes in late September in the late afternoon on an inordinately hot Saturday. It comes while Miike fans himself lazily on the deck of one of the numerous open, tatami-matted rooms of the shrine-temple complex that the cult has deemed its center. He is sweating through the layers of heavy white fabric that his attendants dress him in each morning, and he is irritated with his thoughts. September is a month of catching colds as the seasons shift, and the small wad in the back of his throat neither concerns nor interests him as he coughs, urging it to dislodge and travel up to be spat out. He is too preoccupied with his own thoughts : concerns of suicide and the increasing transparency of the fact that to commit such would be impossible while under the oppressive surveillance that the cult places on him. Even in that moment, Honami sits with him and keeps a careful eye on Miike’s every intake of breath as he forces out coughs to dislodge whatever is stuck at the base of his throat.

The trees around the lake are related to aspen trees, and, even in late September, they have already turned a handsome, golden hue : more vibrant and saturated than the pale _obi_ around his and Honami’s waists. The leaves, too, are speckled brown with imperfection in a mottled sort of way that Miike has always appreciated – even before he was familiar with the sight of them in-person. The rich darkness of those spots and the rimming of the leaves with the color, too, remind Miike distantly of that one member of their cult who frustrates Miike with his resistance to the serum and yet charms Miike with his open, innocent expressions.

Suddenly, the wad in the back of his throat dislodges and, with a final cough, Miike spits it into his mouth. He reaches for the handkerchief that lies on the tray that Honami had brought for them, but he pauses before he can pick it up. There is something soft against his tongue – almost leathery in texture though so thin and light – and he presses it against his teeth in confusion, wondering what could have been stuck in his throat that would account for this consistency. He draws the handkerchief from the tray and lightly licks the edge of it, pressing the soft thing to its fabric, before pulling back and frowning.

Then, all of the movements of the birds and the wind in the leaves seem irrelevant because there on the balled-up fabric in Miike’s palm is a single, mangled, white petal : unmistakable even though Miike would have never guessed or even come to suspect that he could produce such a thing. Whatever delicate and small white flower it belongs to is still some months away, if it ever comes, and Miike knows immediately that he has no desire to ever learn what flower it is. He looks up and sees that Honami has already caught on.

There’s no use in hiding what lies on the white handkerchief. Despite the distance at which sits and how small and unrecognizable the petal must be at that distance, Honami’s expression is twisted into a deathly silent rage that tells Miike more than Miike is brave enough to hear. Miike decides that he won’t deal with Honami yet – will see if he has to at any time in the near-future – and looks back down to the petal.

It’s not a question who the petal is for. Miike would have to be completely incompetent or drenched in denial to not know who the petal is for, and Miike has never known himself to be predisposed to denial even if a constant thought of his regards his incompetency. But that’s an incompetency different from a basic recognition of one’s thoughts and emotions, and it has no place in relation to Yugi Kotarou.

Yugi Kotarou is a thought of Miike’s that, though he would never allow it to be said aloud, pulls old and worn emotions of curiosity and yearning to the forefront of Miike’s mind. Usually, it’s clouded by despair, small bits of anger, resignation, and no small amount of distaste. Yugi Kotarou might be a hope brighter than the sun for Miike, but, ergonomically, it’s a liability that Miike cannot allow to account for.

He remembers well the first time he laid eyes on Yugi Kotarou. Heat from July made the trees across the lake dance around in horizontal swirls : made beads of sweat prickle foreheads before they were either wiped away or slid down into one’s eyes. Yugi Kotarou had been no exception. His bangs were slightly wet where they laid brushed back from his face, and the sleeves of his new uniform clung to his arms as if dampened. The humidity in the air, thick like the swarms of mosquitos that laid their eggs in the lake, made it all the more miserable. But when Yugi Kotarou was told to look up from where he knelt, after he finished reciting his vows, Miike was enticed by something in his eyes, and the hesitation in Yugi’s movements before he followed Miike’s command had Miike’s breath catch in this throat.

It had seemed, at the time, as if a door with a cool breeze had opened in front of him, and he wanted to stand in front of the open archway for as long as he could. But, instead, he had quickly pushed the door shut and sent the newest addition to the cult away before Honami or, worse, Sono could realize exactly what had transpired.

But that night, his thoughts had lingered on that single beat of hesitation and everything it could mean for the future.

So, seeing the white petal on the handkerchief, Miike refuses to crumple it in the folds of fabric and toss it back to the tray. He hears Honami stand, leave, clear in intent to tell Sono of the development regarding their deity. Miike does not let himself care for a moment. Instead, he focuses on how this development ever occurred in the first place.

Yugi Kotarou’s adoration for him as deity should have been enough. Miike had thought, without a moment’s doubt, that it was enough. He watched Yugi Kotarou pass in the hallways and listened to the deep tones of his voice through doors in the stolen moments of strolls about the grounds enough to satisfy the tug at his chest. There was no residual resentment towards his admiration for the other. When Yugi Kotarou came back from the Olympics empty-handed, unable to fill a single spot as replacement, it had not burdened Miike’s mind, for it had been the intended outcome.

Miike swallows and becomes aware of the new heaviness in his chest. Miike had noticed it a few days ago, but suddenly it comes into perspective for what it is. Miike sits, a little taken aback and a little unsettled, and he swallows again. It persists. He wonders when the next petal will come.

Hanahaki isn’t necessarily rare as a condition throughout the world, but it also isn’t the most common of experiences for persons either. Middle school and high school students are most notorious for catching the disease, and their coughs of petals are so commonplace and romanticized that they have taken the name of ‘puppy petals’ amongst adults teasing the teenagers for their crushes. But to develop hanahaki further than puppy petals – to cough blossoms and perhaps even bundles or chains – is a serious matter that’s rather uncommonly encountered. The surgery, Miike knows, is an expensive but often life-saving affair with a heavy cost.

He considers that Sono will most likely want to immediately perform the surgery on him. After all, the deity of a religion cannot be seen harboring romantic affections without immediately becoming ‘human’ to its followers. Miike realizes, at the same time, that he’d rather fight to the death against all of the high members of the cult than have them take his memory of that initial heartbeat of hesitation from him. Yugi Kotarou might be inconvenient and frustrating and depressing for everything that is immediately relevant, but he is also the only instance of goodness that Miike knows – an instance that he never expected to find.

Miike folds the handkerchief and lays it down on the tray. He makes sure that the petal stands out ostentatiously on the top of it where anyone who goes to pick up the tray could see clearly. He then stands from where he kneels on the pillow and looks across the lake. He thinks about when the leaves will fall and decides in that instant that he will have his death be not at his own hands, for fear of being stopped, and reaffirms his decision to not let his life be stolen away from him by the likes of Honami or Sono. He will be killed either by Yugi Kotarou or by the flowers that are for him, and Miike decides that, though he does not wish to ever see the full blossoms, he will wait for them to come and choke him if Yugi Kotarou himself is not wooed into choking him to death first.


	2. ethereality, ephemerality, enrapture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Polar Night : from Yugi's perspective. I anticipate on switching between perspectives per chapter.

The flowers kept everyone at a distance from him. If the childish grumbling, laced with vanity and impatience, failed to drive the other undergraduates away from him, then the flowers surely did. It wasn’t uncommon to avoid those who showed the symptoms of Hanahaki. The disease carried with it the air of discomfort and awkwardness when its carrier had progressed past the silly petals of puppy love. As a general rule, no one wanted to become involved in the complicated emotional state of the carrier, much less have the love interest’s identity be passed around as gossip to inevitably become a guilt trip against the flowers’ recipient.

Kogure, at least, maintained a professional tone with Miike when they worked together. He did not comment when Miike began to cough - holding a hand up to catch the flower that would inevitably come. He paused in his speech, often, and waited until Miike had finished hacking up spit and petals before continuing on with the previous topic. Not that Miike tended to listen. Some of their senpai had expressed frustration with Miike’s disinterest in the work assigned to him. They lodged their complaints against Miike’s tone of voice, his jabs, his lack of productivity, and his penchant for getting up to wander off mid-mission. Ichijima’s response to the complaints never wavered, however. Even when Miike expressed blatant disrespect to Ichijima’s face, Ichijima maintained composure, sighed, and – as if struck by some profound emotion based off of information withheld from the rest of them – would exclaim to himself and the paintings of the Church, “Ah! Well, it can only be expected.”

Yugi watched all of this from a short distance.

He, Kogure, and Miike were expected to work together as a team in their training and initiation, huddled together in a ‘class’ like their _senpai_ had been before them and their _daisenpai_ before that. As such, Yugi saw all of the flowers that fell from Miike’s chapped lips : chapped from wiping them of spittle after each coughing fit. He was close enough to see the white color of the petals as they dropped, but he didn’t dare approach Miike on the matter.

Yugi had never known a person with Hanahaki in all twenty-four years of his life before now. But if what the movies and the gossip around him held had any truth to it, then he understood that developing flowers was something near-unspeakable. And if someone bore flowers, then who was to suppose that those flowers would only stay as such and not morph larger and larger into bundles and then chains and perhaps even branches before either surgery or death stole away from them their memories and emotions? It wasn’t uncommon, either, Yugi knew, for someone with Hanahaki to hide it for as long as possible, whatever the reasons might be.

And yet, despite all of the stigma and the short but awkward, pitying looks that the other cadets gave Miike when a coughing fit started up, Miike never hid his flowers. He coughed in public, not holding his hand against his mouth to cover the evidence, not squishing the flowers in his fists. He coughed and let the full flower land in his open hand. Often, he would transfer the flower to a neatly folded tissue, which would collect the small blossoms throughout the day until they were relieved of duty and Miike carried them back to his bunkbed to dry and crush between the pages of a book he kept under his pillow. Whoever Miike loved enough to cough flowers for, Miike clearly thought of them as something to be displayed rather than hidden away.

And Yugi found himself unable to look away.

Even now, as Miike coughs at his keyboard – his work long forgone in favor of badgering at Kogure and Yugi – Yugi watches him in between the lines of code he types shakily into the command prompt. The flower comes after only a minute of forceful hacking on Miike’s part, and it flies out in a short burst of air. Free of Miike’s teeth and lips, it sticks to the side of Miike’s palm. The room quiets again, and Miike smears it onto the tissue at his side.

Yugi wonders how long Miike has been coughing the flowers.

It would be cruel to ask, Yugi knows. He’s lost concentration of his work, and he frowns down at the desk to avoid being called out for staring at Miike. He has no way of knowing if the flowers have been there for months or for weeks. It could be a common, small love that the other is simply refusing to let go of. Plenty of those, Yugi knows at the very least, stay as irksome flowers until their carrier moves on with their affections. But deep in Yugi’s mind, there lies the worry that these flowers are only the start of some horribly gnarled plant that is steadily taking root in the other’s chest. Miike’s long silences - sad and reflective - catch Yugi’s attention more than he likes to admit, and he understands that someone so forlorn in their own thoughts wouldn’t stop their affections at just flowers.

Yugi wishes he could just stop staring. Miike is bound to notice eventually all of the lingering looks and the way Yugi hesitates whenever he sees, in the corner of his eyes, Miike standing alone in some room of the Church. It doesn’t matter how pretty Miike might be or how lovely his voice might come to sound when he chooses not to belittle those around him. Yugi sets his jaw and promises yet again to himself to look away the next time rather than stare.

“Yugi-san?”

Kogure’s voice is as startling as it is clear, and Yugi nearly jumps out of his skin at the sound of it. When his eyes find Kogure’s, he can’t find a trace of emotion in them. He starts to go anxious with nerves.

“Uh, yes?” Yugi asks.

“You haven’t been working for the past seven minutes. You should resume doing so before Momose-san returns.”

Yugi glances to the clock and can only guess that Kogure, ever accurate, is right. He certainly hasn’t been paying attention to the time. Kogure might appreciate the finesse of working under set times with such diction-specific work, but Yugi couldn’t care less about what he’s typing or how long he’s taking. His eyes betray him yet again and flicker to Miike, who has looked up in curiosity but is frowning.

Miike’s eyes meet his, and Yugi wrenches his sight away and back to Kogure.

“Understood. My apologies for the delay.” He sets his hands back on the keyboard. And before he can begin to type – before he can glance to see what his last line of code was and check the notebook beside him to see what to type next – Miike decides to pipe up.

“Too busy looking at me?”

Yugi would swear that his blood ran cold the moment he registered Miike’s words. He looks up, aware that his mouth is parted, aware that he must look incredibly stupid in that moment, and stares at Miike in horror. Miike observes him, chin lowered and bangs hanging into his eyes. He’s frowning like he doesn’t trust Yugi’s attention. Yugi wonders if Miike thinks he’s judging him for the flowers.

Except Yugi isn’t judging Miike for the flowers in the slightest. Instead, he’s wondering how long they’ve been there, and who they’re for, and thinking about how tight his throat and chest get whenever he lets himself wonder too long on the matter.

“I, I,” Yugi fumbles. He knows that Kogure is watching him, too. “I wouldn’t-”

“Am I that interesting to you?”

Yugi doesn’t know how to respond to the question. He has no idea how he’s supposed to save himself from how caught he is. Miike is infuriating to deal with for others, and, though Yugi hasn’t had to extensively speak with him yet, he knows he’s out of his league with this.

Miike frowns further at Yugi’s silence, and he straightens up a little in his chair. His gaze turns away from Yugi. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter one way or the other, I guess. Either way, I’ll keep coughing these up.”

Yugi’s mouth goes dry.

“Is it hindering your ability to work?” Kogure questions, and Yugi’s thankful that there’s another person in the room. Yugi finds Kogure a little funny for how uptight he is, but, right now, he’s a lifesaver.

Miike just snorts. He has a habit of twirling his chair whenever he gets one that can do so, and he does so now. “It’s not like I would work even if I wasn’t coughing.”

“I’m not sure how much longer Ichijima-san will allow you to ignore your objectives.”

“That guy can do whatever he wants,” Miike grumbles. “He thinks he knows me.”

Kogure doesn’t seem to have a response to that, and he returns to his computer. The sounds of his fingers on the keyboard break some of the silence in the room, but the awkward stillness of the conversation’s abrupt ending remains. Miike’s eyes flit back to Yugi, and Yugi realizes again that he’s been staring. He goes to say something before he stops, and he knows his mouth must look like a fish’s : opening and closing without making noise.

He ducks his head back to his notebook and is unable to read. He can feel Miike’s eyes resting on him.

Momose returns in only ten minutes, and he excuses them of their duties for the day. On cue, Miike folds up his tissue and pockets it. Today, he had only coughed up five flowers and two petals in the six hours since their time began. Yesterday, he had coughed up ten small flowers : three only half-formed. They exit the room as a group when Momose asks.

Their bedroom is a communal room, and they return in silence to their shared quarters.

Yugi goes to his bunkbed upon entering and sits down on the cot, going to untie his shoelaces. Kogure ignores the bed in favor of going to their desk to continue working on the computer. And Miike pulls out the book from under his pillow. He dries out the most recent flowers that he's carrying, dabbing at them until they stop blotting the tissue, and opens the book. The manner in which Miike rests the flowers down in the fold of the book – nearly a third into it already – is gentle, though his mouth is pressed into a stern line.

“You should stop staring, you know,” Miike calls out.

Yugi blinks and realizes he’s the one who Miike is addressing. “I’m not,” Yugi protests. “I’m just…” And the sentence hangs unfinished for some time. Miike just snorts. Yugi tries to find something to finish with, and he manages to string together, “I’m just confused.”

Miike’s nose scrunches up, and Yugi’s eyes follow the movement. It’s one of the more endearing things he’s seen in his life. He wonders if it’s a common habit of Miike’s. “Confused?” Miike echoes. His tone is unforgiving in its disproval. “What’s there to be confused by?”

“Uh, no, it’s nothing.” Yugi hopes that backing out of the conversation will encourage Miike to drop it.

Miike doesn’t seem to catch the hint. Then, Yugi amends himself. It’s much more likely that Miike knows exactly what Yugi was trying to do and decided to disregard his intention completely. “It’s just Hanahaki,” Miike announces strongly.

The word seems to reflect off of the walls and furniture in favor of hitting Yugi directly. Kogure has stopped typing at the computer. The words of a flower-bearer are rare enough that even his attention has been snagged.

“Hanahaki isn’t something to be taken lightly,” Kogure interjects. “No medicine in the world has been able to control its affects or prevent its conception.”

“I know that already,” Miike gripes. “All the more reason to not pay it mind.”

“But-” Yugi wants to contend.

“But nothing.” Miike frowns at Yugi, emanating a particular disproval that Yugi cannot understand. Miike gives a little sardonic laugh. “It’s not like they’re your flowers anyway.”

Yugi cannot argue with Miike on that matter. His jaw clenches tightly, and he forces himself to look away and back to his boots : only one of which has made it off of his feet. He tugs the other boot off of his foot and sets them off towards the footboard where they won’t trip him. Miike looks away from him finally, and Yugi dares to sneak a glance to confirm the fact. Whatever had driven that argument had decided to settle down.

Yugi sits on his bed for a minute, thinking. There isn’t much that he has anymore. He’s aware that few cadets come into SAKURA with things to do and promises to keep. In the gaps of self-purpose and self-worth, there are only a handful of hobbies that are permitted within the Church. Many cadets choose to uptake reading or academic professionalism in one avenue or the other. Other cadets remain with their old hobbies and only improve upon whatever past projects they were allowed to keep on-hand throughout the transition of entering SAKURA. But Yugi had nothing when he entered the Church, and he still hasn’t found anything with which to pass the time.

Kogure seems content enough to fill in overtime hours beyond what is expected. Miike passes the time through a myriad of annoying pursuits ranging from reading to sketching to fiddling with Yugi’s belongings to folding origami. Yugi would prefer Miike to keep his hands out of Yugi’s shirts and boxers, but he can’t seem to keep Miike out of his things no matter how many times he catches him and yells. For now, though, Miike pulls out another sheet of patterned paper to begin folding. And Yugi still has nothing to do.

He chooses to take off his work coat. The leather and heavy fabric is too hot to wear on most days, and it’s downright stifling to wear in the bedroom. He drapes it over the end of his bed and shifts to lay down : staring up at the ceiling.

It’s a bad habit that he has. Most times, it happens late at night when both Kogure and Miike are asleep under their comforters and Yugi is left alone with his thoughts. Then, he would stare up in the pitch darkness towards the place where the ceiling should be, and his thoughts drift. Often, he thinks on Teru Hi no Mori. He considers his family – now dead – and regrets being pressured to commit the acts he hardly accepts as his own. He considers how hateful and how abhorrent Teru Hi no Mori’s deity was to demand such orders from the followers of the organization.

He thinks on the words the deity had chosen. _Taint_. Yugi feels the old churn of hatred burn in his gut. _Toxin_. _Plague_. He wants to meet that deity again. There are so many things he would like to say to him, accuse him of : throwing him aside, betraying his trust, discrediting his emotions, killing his family, stripping him of the only place he belonged. And, then, he’d finally fulfill his intention of killing him.

But a traitorous speaker in Yugi’s mind whispers to him underneath the tempest of enmity. Against Yugi’s wishes, he remembers the fleeting, soft words of a deity he had once claimed to love. The way his deity had shown such consternation and grief before his eyes. He doesn’t understand what tore at that deity’s mind to make him disclose such emotion. He remembers warm days in the shrine-temple throughout the summer and into the warm autumns : golden leaves and still waters and miles upon miles of farmland surrounding the forest that housed it. He remembers seeing – in stolen moments of wonder – the deity’s white fashions on the patio alongside his keeper.

Yugi swallows the thickness that has balled again in his throat. He knows that thinking on the matter will do him no good. And he refuses to allow himself linger on the subject now in the daylight when Kogure and Miike are awake and he could be doing anything else. He sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed.

Miike looks up from the crane he’s folded. His eyes rest on the boots that Yugi is tugging back onto his feet. “Where are you going?”

“Training.” Yugi keeps his tone short. He’s not in the mood to speak further with anyone.

“Again? We just got back.” Yugi doesn’t answer. He heads for the door. “Whatever,” Miike sighs. “Make sure to tire yourself out this time. I don’t want to hear you sighing until the early morning again tonight.”

Yugi freezes at the door. He hadn’t realized that Miike was awake last night.

“You were up late last night?” Kogure asks Yugi neutrally.

“I was.”

“You should consider going to bed earlier,” Kogure continues, as if Yugi isn’t seconds from ripping the door off its hinges. “Having insufficient sleep will cut down on your productivity for missions.”

“I would have been asleep,” Yugi grits out, “if I wasn’t woken up by Miike’s coughing.” That was a blatant lie. He had been halfway into imagining what that deity’s face must look like when Miike had suddenly burst into a fit of hacking violent enough that Yugi had been startled upright in bed.

“It’s not my fault!” Miike objects.

Kogure nods in agreement with Yugi. “It woke me, too.”

“Why do you still think you’re a part of this conversation?” Miike mutters, but it’s loud enough that both Kogure and Yugi catch it. Kogure clears his throat and returns to his computer.

A cough follows. Yugi is looking over his shoulder at Miike before he can stop himself. The flower comes up easily this time ; it’s only a little thing. Miike holds it in his palm as if it’s something to be cherished.

“What are you looking at?” Miike asks.

Yugi turns his head away. He tightens his hold on the door handle and swallows. He heads out the door without another word. He closes it harder than he intends, and the slam of it has him wince where he stands outside in the long, narrow hallway.

He walks to the elevator and punches the button for it. He hopes desperately, knowing already somehow it's fruitless, that another two hours of training will leave him exhausted enough to sleep through whatever comes in the night.


	3. deep roots and shallow lungs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> during the early events of akatsuki

The fist swings at him through the thick and musty air of the Church’s basement rooms. Despite the precise momentum behind it, Miike has learned by now through trial and error how to evade it. He blocks it by shoving his forearm on the opposite side of Yugi’s swing and directing it away from him, effectively pushing Yugi’s stance a little too forwards to be fully in balance. Miike takes the opportunity to kick with his left foot – once, then twice – into Yugi’s abdomen before he holds onto the bicep of Yugi’s off-thrown arm. He pulls himself close to Yugi where feet and fist won’t fly out to hit him, then swings so that he’s behind the other. He plans on kicking a knee into the back of Yugi’s, getting him on knees. From there, he’ll proceed as he can and take care of Yugi’s footwork.

Yugi is still much better at hand-to-hand than Miike is, though, and it’s by a wide margin, too. Before Miike’s even properly raised his foot, Yugi takes advantage of the two arms still on his upper right arm and bends over violently. Miike goes flying over Yugi’s shoulders, and he’s in a bad enough position that he can’t try to swing around to kick into Yugi’s legs. Instead, he lands with only his heels on the floor and the rest of him bent over backwards as if he’s reclining over the back of a sofa.

Yugi headbutts him, and Miike doesn’t hold back the hiss of pain that follows. He makes the mistake of reaching back to clutch the back of his skull – where a bruise is guaranteed to form by the end of the day – and Yugi’s firm grip closes on his wrist. His arm is twisted painfully behind him. From there, all Yugi has to do is force Miike’s weight forwards, and Miike’s crumpling into a kneeling position. His other wrist is snatched, though Miike gets an elbow jab into Yugi’s gut first. Miike’s handcuffed at a humiliating speed.

He can hear Yugi panting behind him, and there’s a flare of pride that he’s caused the other this much trouble to beat him. The bell goes off, telling them that their match has reached its end, but Yugi stands still for a few beats before he starts to take the handcuffs off of Miike.

Miike laughs loudly, feels Yugi’s hands tense on the remaining cuff as he does so. “How extraordinary!” he shouts, and even he can’t tell if he’s trying to jeer at Yugi or hide praise behind a mean tone. “I really can’t beat you, Kotarou.”

“Oi.”

Yugi wrings Miike’s wrist in the cuff as he takes it off, and Miike whines at the burn. He clutches his wrist and stumbles up to his feet, turning back to Yugi, who has busied himself with securing the handcuffs back to his belt. Miike feels a flutter in his chest. He’s not ready to begin coughing yet. He doesn’t want it to start just yet.

Yugi has flourished so further beyond what Miike knew him for while Yugi was still an Olympic stand-in. It flatters Miike that the other has managed to make something admirable and strong out of what had initially been a jest on Miike’s part. Miike almost credits all of that progress to himself. After all, it was his suggestion in the first place. All of Yugi’s training and devotion had been single-handedly composed by Miike, and it wasn’t just a small feeling of pride that drove Miike to imagining Yugi’s successes a product of Miike’s own construction. It was better than letting them be the product of Yugi’s grief and loss of direction.

So, as Ariga and Kagami enter the training room with Kogure in tow, Miike giggles a little to the side so he catches Yugi’s attention. He’s proven to be uncannily talented at attracting Yugi’s eye, be it through flowers or through words. And, sure enough, Yugi notices the giggle and frowns at Miike rather than greets their senpai.

“How long have you been doing this?” Miike asks, leaning in towards Yugi.

Yugi shoves Miike’s hands away from him and makes a gruff noise in the back of his throat. Miike hides a snort. “I’ve done this for years. Naturally, I’m better than you.”

“Oh?” Miike croons. “Trying to impress-”

The flower in his chest seems to decide in that second that it won’t wait any longer to break free from the cage that is Miike’s ribs. It sets about constructing a racket, and Miike feels his breath catch before he can spare an inhale to prepare himself. The result is a wheezing cough that continues to spiral deeper, and Miike can’t break to catch a gasp of air. He crouches down to the floor, coughing quickly in succession so that the flower can move enough to relax on his cough reflex.

He’s vaguely aware of a palm slamming into his upper back, likely trying to help Miike dislodge the thing in his lungs.

His vision gets dizzy for a few heart-wrenching seconds before the flower finally falls into his throat. He gasps musky air desperately and accidentally inhales the flower back in again. He sets back to coughing. Someone tips him so that his face is closer to the ground than his chest.

The flower travels up his throat slowly and painfully before Miike gathers his strength to cough a last strong puff of air, and the flower flies from his esophagus to his teeth. He refrains from biting down and instead opens his jaw wider, spitting the flower onto the ground.

With it out, Miike flings his head back and lies back on his elbows, heaving for breath. Yugi and Ariga are bent over him, eyes flitting over his body in worry as if their cursory glances could ascertain the state of Miike’s condition. Kagami’s a little further back, and, at this angle, Miike can’t see where Kogure is standing.

“Miike, are you alright?” Yugi questions him with a heavy hand on his shoulder.

Ariga’s voice is more contained, less emotional, but he still asks, “Can you breathe?”

Miike shrugs off the both of them and stands, though he stoops to pick his flower up and off the dusty floor. “Back off already,” he grumbles.

Ariga steps back first : awkward and stiff unlike he ever is while scolding Miike. It’s an awkwardness born of unsure boundaries and shaky social convention. Miike’s vaguely aware that Ariga struggled himself with the disease for a short time, if Kagami’s complaints in the baths were to be believed. Shirasaki’s missing messiah also had in his file a medical history with Hanahaki Disease – reportedly for the same person as Ariga’s case – that was never resolved.

Yugi’s backwards motion is slow to follow Ariga’s. His eyes flit about the room dumbly.

“You might want to report your worsening condition with Chief Ichijima,” Ariga advises, though, with him, advice is always an order. “It might be better to cut your hand-to-hand training requirements and focus on your firearms practice and tech work.”

“Eh?” Miike pulls a sour face at the idea of getting trapped with Shirasaki in the shooting range more than he’s already required to. “But hand-to-hand is what I’m good at.”

“You just got your ass handed to you,” Kagami jeers. Ariga shoots him a sharp look.

“But guns are so noisy, too, and they’re heavy,” Miike pushes on. He knows that the best method to getting his way with the seniors here is to be obstinate until they give up in exasperation. “And computers dislike me.”

“Computers don’t actually compute emotions,” Kogure pipes up. “You simply overrun their CPU with loop errors in your code, and they crash.”

Miike scoffs.

“Alright!” Ariga orders, and he’s visibly irritated enough that the room goes silent. Kagami doesn’t even add a snide remark. “Miike, just inform Ichijima of your condition.”

“Yes, yes, oh sir.”

Ariga’s cutting gaze lingers on Miike after that contribution. “And Yugi.”

Yugi stiffens to the pliability of a plywood board, and Miike snorts, turning his back. “Yes, sir!”

“Your performance is improving, but you need to get better at handling your opponents’ feet. You’re too accustomed to the guidelines of your own style. Those whom you will be fighting against will not fight so cleanly.”

“And there’ll be biters!” Kagami snickers.

Ariga maintains a straight face. “Make sure to improve your concentration in those areas by next time.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then,” Ariga eyes Miike and Yugi with equal scrutiny, “training is over for the day.”

“Yay, hooray, good work,” Kagami cheers lowly from the back.

Ariga turns to Kagami with a particularly severe expression and drags the other from the room : clipboard in hand. Kogure exits the room silently, as he usually does. Miike is left still catching his breath with Yugi standing beside him.

Yugi clears his throat. “I hope things go well.” His little, righteous good-bye is stilted, and Yugi exits the room without another word.

Miike huffs out the breath he’s been holding. It’s somewhere in-between hopeless and annoyed, and both emotions hold Yugi to blame. Much of the lingering glances that the other had given so bountifully to him had dwindled in the last few months. It’s relieving in the same way that it sticks into Miike’s side like a thick thorn. The curtness and the refusal to look in Miike’s direction stings, and Miike knows that the flowers in his chest react to it violently. Too many coughing fits have had their trigger be the turn of the head away. But it’s not the majority of his coughing fits, and Miike is thankful, at least, for that.

The chest pain is becoming more frequent, too, and it commands much of his attention. Every time he digs through the boxes under Yugi’s bed, running his hands over the wallet at the very bottom – old and tattered with, tucked inside, a sliver of the handkerchief that Miike had once handed to Yugi back when Miike was not a name that Yugi was familiar with – he feels his ribs ache. Whether it is heartache or the roots curling tighter around his diaphragm, Miike doesn’t know. He’s vaguely aware that one root has twisted around a rib. He can feel it when he presses down hard while bathing.

Miike knows that the flowers will soon turn to full chains. They’re already coming up in small bunches, and that in itself is concerning enough. He’s running out of time, and, though it relieves him to know that he won’t have to keep working for much longer, Miike is anxious about what could be left behind if he goes too soon. The cult has become a distant thought, rarely thought of daily anymore, but it will eventually be drawn back into the sphere of concerns for Miike to deal with. Sono was too suspicious to not be involved in something much larger than the scope of the cult.

Men like Sono are too big for the room. Honami had seemed much more revering towards Sono than Miike ever let himself be forced to, and Miike can’t imagine what the cult’s hierarchy must look like now that Honami has taken over as the main puppet.

But it’s still only distant, and Miike’s more relevant concern is handling his condition to survive until then.

He wonders how obvious it is to Yugi that they’re going to be partnered as messiahs. It’s been long enough since they entered the Church, and the date is near-overdue for their assignments. And if their history together – so intimately tied – hasn’t already sealed their fate, then all of Yugi’s actions were carving it into stone. Even if his patience with Miike is dwindling. Even if the evidence of Miike’s condition causes him, now, to be more uncomfortable than awestruck as it had once been.

It sounds too painful and lovely from Miike’s perspective. To share a room with beds beside each other. And to lie in the night knowing that the only other sound in the room would be the sound of Yugi’s snoring – aggravating and droning – would torment Miike’s head and chest with indescribable aches. Miike doesn’t know how his condition would respond to the shift in contact.

He looks to the flower in his hand and suddenly has the urge to crush it. It offends him how easily his heart has been swayed to just another member of the cult. Looking back, it was so inanely foolish of him to think that there was anything in Yugi. All there was, was a lost boy who believed too much of what was said to him. Unable to recognize what had always been right in front of him, Yugi is not something worth dying for. And yet Miike keeps dying despite all of the reasoning he goes through with himself when he’s alone like this.

He coughs, but there’s no flower to come up yet. It’s just to loosen up his lungs : stretch the tendrils out enough to breathe without struggle for a minute or two. Enough to make it to Ichijima’s office and hopefully enough to last through the meeting. Miike distrusts the knowing looks that Ichijima sends him each time he coughs near the man.

Miike leaves the training room and makes his way to Ichijima’s office. He passes Kogure on the way, but the other does not acknowledge him. Miike wonders if Yugi’s already gone back to their group room to retire.

Ichijima is alone when Miike enters without knocking, which is both a disappointment and an unwelcome surprise. Ichijima usually has someone in his office. If it’s not some other cadet of the Church screaming whatnot about their own troubles, then it’s Kuroko with a tea tray and a plethora of remarks waiting to batter Miike with.

Ichijima looks up from his laptop with a raised eyebrow over the rim of his unnervingly thick glasses frames. His expression settles into something akin to welcome when he recognizes Miike. Ichijima smiles, gesturing to the front of his desk wordlessly, and Miike follows the instruction if only to make this go faster.

“Miike-kun,” Ichijima finally greets when Miike draws close to his desk. “It is good to see you outside of briefing. What can I do for you?”

The tone is different from how he speaks with the other cadets. Miike frowns. He wonders if playing the part of a pouting kid will expedite the conversation.

“Ariga-senpai advised that I inform you of my condition,” he decides to forego the childish play.

“And what would that condition be, exactly?”

“The disease is now preventing me from performing well in combat training.”

Ichijima chuckles. “Ah, I see. Have you considered training with someone other than Yugi-kun, then?”

Miike feels the air rush out of his lungs, and there is a flare of indignation in his chest : nestled too-tightly against his petals. He’s furious and enraged. Ichijima has pretended to know him for too long now. His comments – in the mocking tone of fake fondness – have been grating on Miike’s nerves. He had been perturbed when Ichijima had seemed to know what the evergreen meant. He had been even more perturbed when Ichijima seemed to know why he refused to bathe with the others. But those had been a matter of Miike’s files. Understanding his emotions and the roots of his condition was something private, and Miike refuses to let Ichijima leverage them.

He juts out his jaw, knowing that his outrage is already obvious in his reaction, and accuses, “How dare you think you know me.”

Ichijima merely laughs freely at his words. “Miike-kun,” he leans forward as if the motion would appeal to Miike. It doesn’t. “You must remember that I am the one directly in charge of pairing all cadets so that your survival rates have the highest outcome. I know about everyone here.”

“Stay out of my business.” Ichijima settles back in his chair with a sigh, and it sounds disappointed even to Miike’s ears. “Don’t talk to me like I’m some pawn for you to move around. I have my own agenda here.”

“And how much of that agenda involves Yugi-kun, might I ask?” Miike closes his jaw and feels it set shut as if glued down. Ichijima huffs. “Well, until you talk to him, there isn’t much that you can do, is there?”

“What would you know?”

“Miike-kun.” Ichijima peers over the rim of his glasses at him. Suddenly, Miike feels as if he’s a child being admonished for talking back too harshly, and he burns with the humiliation of it. “You know as well as I that you are well on your way to breathing your last.” He didn’t have to put it so finitely. “Neither of us want that end, trust me. And so, I can only suggest that you discuss things with Yugi-kun before something goes too far.”

Miike doesn’t trust the tone of that sentence at all. “Before what goes too far?” he questions. He’s heard words like this before : from Sono and from Honami. He knows that they’re veiled threats, only partway concealed with the air of inevitability.

“What do you think?” Ichijima chuckles. “Hanahaki Disease is a dangerous illness to have past its infant stages. I’m sure that you have no intention to get the surgery, and, out of respect, I will not force you to.” Ichijima ignores Miike’s mutter of, ‘What respect?’ and continues, “If you manage to survive for much longer, you will receive messiahs alongside Yugi-kun and Kogure-kun. I’m sure you’re keen enough to understand what that will mean.”

Miike frowns at him, but there’s only so much bite left to put into it. The talk of Yugi is making his chest heavy, and he’ll be damned if he coughs a single petal out in front of this man.

“There is also the concern of your old affiliates’ activities and what they might come to mean for the rest of Japan.”

Those words catch Miike’s attention. He squints at Ichijima, trying to find where the lie is, if there is one. Was there something that he had missed back then? Had it been something on Sono’s agenda, or Honami’s? Was Oikawa a pawn for some outside entity? Was there someone else in the cult that was a mole : feeding information to who knows who about an easily-corrupted mass of ‘worshippers?’

“What do you know of that?” Miike demands.

“Well,” Ichijima deflects, “it remains to be seen what will happen.” Miike itches to press further, but he can tell that the meeting is closing and that he has no power to stop it. “Now, Miike-kun. Be a dear and report back to your quarters.”

Miike curls a lip at the wording but bows minutely before turning and taking his leave. As he reaches the door, Ichijima calls out one last time.

“Oh, and Miike-kun. When you begin coughing clusters, report again to me. I’d like to keep an eye on your condition.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Miike declines to give Ichijima the satisfaction of an appropriate response.

He hears another chuckle as he closes the door behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> if you're unfamiliar with Japanese or Yugi's name, the 柚 (yu) kanji in 柚木 (yugi) means yuzu


End file.
